Hard to say what counts as disappointing. Brock Purdy regresses? Brandon Aiyuk misses the season? 49ers fans have lived through worse. They don’t do average years—it’s either “almost there” or “burn it down.”
Around these parts, many fans may tell you the season is a trainwreck if the 49ers don’t win every game (including their preseason contests). You can be a bit more modest and say not making the Super Bowl is an abysmal failure. In 2024, that was true—the 49ers were a Super Bowl team, but then Dial-A-Injury came to collect interest from 2023, along with a defensive coach in over his head, and a special teams coach that had been on the staff a few seasons too long.
It’s an understatement to say the 49ers’ 6-11 record in 2024 was a disappointment. That was a nightmare. A nightmare to endure week after week of watching the team get a lead, someone get injured, and the lead gets blown in a variety of ways.
Ok, so let’s look to 2025: What would you say is a “disappointment” this year? Things are a lot different. Do you still think the 49ers not making the Super Bowl is a disappointment? The playoffs?
What would you say would be a nightmare of a season? For 49ers fans, they may only know what nightmares are given how ridiculous the bad seasons go.
Bleacher Report’s nightmare scenario for the 49ers centers on Brock Purdy and the team being financially handcuffed together:
Just after landing a big-money long-term contract, Brock Purdy continues to regress significantly with a depleted supporting cast, and the 49ers find themselves handcuffed for years to come.
That’s the suggestion for a nightmare? Given what fans have gone through, that sounds pretty tame. An ideal nightmare for this would be all of those things, but Purdy also goes down halfway through the season and doesn’t return until 2026. Even then, I don’t see Purdy taking that much of a step back. He wasn’t the problem in 2024. He certainly has some share of the blame, but his kicker was hit or miss, his receivers couldn’t catch, and the defense couldn’t stop Geno Smith. And Purdy had a lot of week-to-week changes in his supporting cast in 2024.
So, what do you think defines “Disappointment” and “Nightmare” for 2025?
I know the first thing everyone is going to say is that without a Super Bowl win, the season is disappointing. I’ll pump the brakes here and try to be real: I don’t think that’s happening with all the roster churn. We could say that not securing a playoff berth is disappointing; I agree there. The 49ers have the easiest schedule (on paper), and there shouldn’t be any excuse for the blown games last year to happen again.
Going deeper, I think what makes 2025 disappointing is if the second-year players don’t develop further. The rookies stole the show multiple times last year when everyone else was sidelined by the injury bug. Hopefully, a full offseason and that experience will make them ready to take the team further, and the 49ers can retain some young stars.
2025 will be disappointing if we see a significant step back from Brock Purdy. He won’t have the offense this year that he had during the 2023 campaign, again, but he will have a more secure-functioning defense. I won’t say more talented, because that 2023 defense was darn good, but without the coaching hoopla we came to love with Steve Wilks, the defense will be less dysfunctional.
This is coming from someone who has criticized Robert Saleh for miscommunications that have plagued his defenses for critical moments (one being the Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs a few years back).
I’d be elated to see the 49ers win a Super Bowl, but not getting there wouldn’t be a disappointing season. There’s been a lot of roster attrition and a youth movement of sorts on the 49ers. I’d like to see the second-year players take another step to solidify their play, and I’d like to see a display from the rookies not unlike last year’s mess (now that season WAS a disappointment).
Thing is, the 49ers don’t really do disappointing seasons. They either hand you an A or drop a full-blown F. The 49ers either have a good season that ends with disappointment (because, 49ers) or their seasons are so far from anything positive, you’d have to buy into several GPUs to crunch all the numbers necessary to prove positive data.
Which leads me to what a nightmare is. 49ers fans know what nightmare seasons are. 49ers fans are desensitized to nightmare seasons. When you ask a 49ers fan what a nightmare season is, several examples can be provided with little trouble. At this point, 49ers fans would like anything other than a nightmare. If things go wrong, they go off the rails. What’s a nightmare? If Dial-A-Injury returns yet again. That roster has too much youth on it and contracts with 1-2 years left, which can be disrupted by season-ending injuries in August and September. Everyone remembers 2018 and Dial-A-Injury showing up to claim Jimmy Garoppolo. Then more came from there. How can offensive players get better when their quarterback is out for the season?
What do you think makes the 49ers’ season disappointing? What would make it an absolute nightmare?